


The Power of Kung Food

by Jennifer-Oksana (JenniferOksana)



Series: Tango Series [8]
Category: 30 Rock
Genre: Crack, F/M, Romantic Comedy, Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 12:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5497721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jenna and Liz have girl time. Liz relies on movie cliches to express herself. Also, steak-frites are enjoyed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Power of Kung Food

Okay. He liked her. He liked her for her.

Liz was in dire need of girl time to discuss this. Possibly complete with elaborate drinks with umbrellas. The problem was that she didn’t have any female friends who she, um, respected.

Jerusalem crickets, she was an awful person. First, she was jerking Jack around, which was bad because he really liked her, and bad because he was still the guy who sent memos talking about missed marketing opportunities, because of course the most important part of her show was giving a free platform to the new Toyota Prius, driving them forward(TM). Second, she had no women friends except Jenna. Pete half-counted, but Pete had decided to go all man on her in this case.

“Do you love him?” was what Pete had asked. “Because until you answer that question, everything else is secondary.”

“That’s not HELPFUL, Pete,” Liz had replied. “Because if I say I love him, then what happens when he decides to have Kenneth shot in an alley?”

“Something that really doesn’t need considering until you’re willing to say if you love him or not, kid,” Pete had said, shrugging her off. “Is it really that hard?”

Yes, yes it was really that hard.

“I hear you need girl time,” Jenna said, tapping Liz on the shoulder. “Are you pregnant?”

“No,” Liz said scornfully. Jenna had started any relationship chat with Liz with the pregnant question ever since the one time Liz had been late, right after college, and thought it was maybe because of a toilet seat. Or at least, she’d told Jenna that, because she was not going to tell Jenna about having awkward fumbling sex with the bouncer at the comedy club that finished with the extra-not-funny broken condom.

“Are you cheating on him?” Jenna asked.

“NO,” Liz said, feeling like she wanted to curl up in a bathroom and read her new copy of the latest Meg Cabot novel while Jack quoted Thomas Friedman at her and asked what they should call in for lunch. And then she would ask Jack for recommendations, and then bitching because Jack always wanted things medium rare and had a bad habit of ordering for her when he knew she liked medium.

Ooh, steak sandwiches, those would be good, with gravy fries. There could be hard cider involved, especially if she said it was a reinterpretation of workingman’s fare.

“What are you thinking right now?” Jenna asked.

“Steak frites are awesome,” Liz said dreamily. Because they were, and she was so going to get them out of Jack tonight. In public. They were going to go to some network event this week, so he owed her steak frites in public.

Jenna snorted. “Oh, don’t lie, you were thinking about your boyfriend, too,” she said. “Liz, it’s okay to occasionally like your boyfriend. It really is.”

“It’s okay not to think about him twenty-four seven, too,” Liz said grouchily. “I feel like such a jerk lately, Jenna. You know he likes me?”

“Jack? Yeah, _everyone_ knows that,” Jenna said.

“No, I mean…he likes the weird things about me,” Liz replied, trying to get across what she was saying. “I’m not very nice to him, either.”

“Everyone knows THAT, too,” Jenna informed Liz archly.

“Thanks, that’s helpful,” Liz said morosely. “Isn’t falling in love supposed to be full of happy jumping moments when you want to dance around in your bathrobe in your apartment and grin stupidly at strangers so that they grin back, complete to the music of Joss Stone?”

Jenna started to laugh. Jenna started to laugh the way Jenna used to laugh before she was a Rising Starlet with a Career and was actually a lot funnier on her own and less annoyingly clingy. Liz started to laugh, too, because okay, the mental image of Liz Lemon, jaded urbanite, doing choreography with Jack Donaghy, network executive guy, was pretty much the most surreal thing…not ever? Because she worked with Tracy Jordan, and knew a guy named Dr. Leo Spaceman. But it was up there.

“Okay, so in this dream of yours, does Jack tap dance, or is he too busy being John Travolta in Grease?” Jenna asked. Damn Jenna for knowing about Liz’s secret love of Grease, men who sang and danced, and soul songs about love. “I know you.”

Liz hung her head. “It’s worse than that,” she admitted.

“No!” Jenna said, eyes wide. “Not…”

“The twist scene in Pulp Fiction,” Liz admitted, sighing. “Except that in the dream, I was Vincent Vega, and Jack was Uma Thurman.”

Jenna was nodding along, blinking. “The last man you had the Pulp Fiction fantasy about was Donnie Bartalotti, and we all know what happened there. You are way, way, way into Jack,” she said. “Also, why don’t you just ask Jack on a date to somewhere where you two can go dancing? If Jonathan’s telling the truth, you two were doing some weird tango lesson when this all got going anyway.”

How come no one ever told Liz that everyone knew her business? How come Jonathan knew all of Liz’s business better than she did? Cerie didn’t know Liz’s business like that, for example.

“Don’t you think Jack would think it was weird for me to ask him on a date?” Liz asked. “As we are, you know, already dating.”

“No,” Jenna said. “Stop making excuses and seize the tiger by the tail, or you will never get your John Travolta fantasy and it’ll be your fault and not Jack’s.”

Liz folded her arms. “That’s…good advice,” she said finally. “And this has been really good girl time, Jenna. Thank you.”

“Yeah, it has, hasn’t it? I think it’s all the time I’m spending with Tracy now that he feels you and Jack have abandoned him,” Jenna said, beaming. “It’s made me really maternal and deep.”

“That’s fantastic,” Liz said. “Even if I think you mostly just made that up right now.”

“Bite me, Liz,” Jenna said with a tight mean grin. Oh, crud, Liz had said that aloud.

“Sorry,” Liz said, cringing. “But maternal and deep?”

“Says the woman who wants Jack Donaghy to dress up like her bitch,” Jenna replied, sticking her tongue out.

They both started to laugh again. Also, it was starting to give Liz an idea. An idea that might go horribly wrong, but maybe not.

“Jenna?” Liz asked. “I have a thought. And I’m going to need help. So tell me what you think about this…”

* * *

Okay. She could do this. She was a grown-ass adult, and her boyfriend liked her, and he liked her idiosyncrasies and there was more to Liz and Jack besides squabbling and sex and eating well. Maybe not even a lot more, but more there was.

Liz knocked on the office door quickly. “Jack?” she asked, peeking in. “Are you busy?”

Jack looked up from his desk, and blinked. “Lemon,” he said, eyebrow looking poised to raise. “Can I help you with something?”

Liz nodded mutely, and then remembered — grown adult who used her words! Tigers and tails! “I asked Jonathan, and he said you were working late,” she said, walking into the room with her large bag of goodies. “So I got us steak sandwiches, frites, and gravy from Brasserie des Halles. Yours is even medium rare like you like.”

“Au jus, frites, and cider,” Jack said as Liz self-consciously started setting things up on his coffee table. “I would kiss you, but then you’d flee in terror and take dinner with you.”

“Maybe,” Liz said, setting down the bag and actually kissing him on the cheek, “And then again, maybe not.”

“Did Tracy set something on fire?” Jack asked suddenly.

“No,” Liz said. “Nothing is wrong on the set for once. Except that the prop guys all have a weird rash, but that is not why I’m here.”

“Are you on drugs?” Jack asked, totally serious.

“I didn’t even hit my head,” Liz replied, rolling her eyes. “Nope. I actually did this out of the goodness of my heart. Not all of us have ulterior motives.”

“You have _never_ done this before,” Jack said, settling down on the couch. “You would usually term this inappropriate or weird or overkill. Forgive the wariness.”

“Yes, I know. I get it,” Liz said, sitting down next to him and folding her legs under herself. Courage. She was doing so well so far, and the next part would probably send him into fits. “I had girl time with Jenna, and it was enlightening.”

“Was it really?” Jack asked.

“Jenna might know things about my past that not even your private detectives do, even,” Liz said, snatching a few frites from his plate. “For instance, you do not understand the thing I have about dancing.”

“Lemon — Elizabeth, excuse me, when you’re like this, you’re always Lemon to me,” Jack said in his best scold-Liz voice, “It took me approximately fifteen minutes of tango lessons to get you out of your halter dress and granny panties. Believe me, I understand.”

Son of a… “Did you know, then, Mister Knows-Everything, that my ultimate dream date, and I mean ever, and I mean like ever ever, is the twist scene from Pulp Fiction?” Liz asked. “I have always wanted to go on a date where the guy would do the twist with me after feeding me chocolate malted shakes.”

“Let me guess — either you’ve never let your boyfriends know this, or they laughed?” Jack asked.

“Dennis said I was functionally retarded,” Liz said. “Man, Dennis was a douchebag, wasn’t he?”

“And how,” Jack said, stealing some of Liz’s frites and dipping them in au jus. “So from your disjointed account of things, I assume that not only would you like me to take you dancing, but that recently, I have received a starring role in the Pulp Fiction dance sequence.”

“As Uma,” Liz said. “Um. Sorry?”

“No, no, don’t apologize. I expect these eccentricities from you,” Jack replied. “When do you want to go out and do the twist?”

Not fair. He made it seem easy, like all Liz had to do was ask, and guys would just go out and do the twist in public. If she wasn’t prepared for that, Liz might even feel crestfallen, but she was prepared for Jack.

“Well. Do you promise that you will not laugh at me, no matter how corny I get in the next two minutes?” Liz said, standing up. Oh, man, this was…this was seriously. If he laughed at her, he was going to wear the steak-frites.

“I do, though I may renege if the corniness is real, rather than a code-phase for sentimentally romantic,” Jack replied. “It’s the best I can do.”

“Fair enough,” Liz said, unbuttoning the two bottom buttons on her blouse and tying it in a knot. As Jack watched, bemused, she slicked her hair back with a headband, and took her shoes off. Then, carefully walking on the balls of her feet, she walked back to the door and opened it slightly. “Gentlemen.”

Grizz and Dot-Com, each holding a boombox over their heads, walked in, followed by Josh, who was almost, but not quite, a worse Ed Sullivan than Tracy.

“I hear you and your fella here…sorry, let me try that again…hey, I hear you and your fella here have entered our really big show,” Josh said, sounding more Jay Leno than Ed Sullivan. “What’s your name, little lady?”

“Um, Liz Lemon,” Liz said.

“And, uh, what about your fella here?”

“Mr. Jack Donaghy,” Liz said, doing her Jack-voice, which was so much better than Josh’s Sullivan-Leno amalgam.

Okay, maybe this was kind of fun.

“Oh, crap, I forget the line,” Josh said. Argh. Tracy would have remembered the line. Or at least said, “Jackie D, you gonna ask this fine lady to dance or what?”

“It’s all right, Josh,” Jack said, standing up. “Leave the boomboxes. I think Lemon and I can do the twist without help.”

“You sure?” Josh asked.

“Go,” Jack ordered. They went, though Dot-Com had the presence of mind to press play on the CD as they left. “Elizabeth.”

“John,” Liz said, because if he always got to use her formal name when he was being Serious Boyfriend, right back at him. “Do you want to dance? The twist is pretty easy. Even I can do it without falling.”

“I’ll follow your lead,” Jack said.

It _was_ pretty easy. Get on the balls of her feet, back one two, and twist, shoulders, waist, hips, knees, and back up, and with two or more parts going at once for extra complexity.

Plus, he was being fun tonight. After her first few twists, Jack grabbed her hands and spun her around, and oh, Liz was dizzy. But laughing. And he wasn’t very good at the twist, but he was making faces at her which kept making her snicker.

And when the song finished, he clapped and she did this little dorky curtsy, and Liz felt anything but weird, or awkward, or confused.

“Talking to _Jenna_ brought this on?” Jack asked, sitting down because hey, they still had frites and sandwiches and other good stuff.

“I know, right,” Liz replied before taking a few bites of her sandwich, which was ridiculously tasty. “But well, it was also that you said you liked me. And that was so, well, that was the kind of thing that you only think John Cusack says in movies.”

“Hence the Dobler-esque boomboxes,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” Liz said before realizing that she’d done the gender-swap thing again. “I need to stop making you the woman in this relationship.”

Jack patted Liz on the shoulder and stole more of her frites, while Liz ate her sandwich lazily.

This had been easy. This had been good, even.

“When’s your call to West Coast?” Liz asked.

“Not for another hour,” Jack said.

“Good,” she said. “Can I stay? To just…hang out?”

He gave her one of the looks of _Liz Lemon, did you need to ask that question?_ but she did need to ask, because she wasn’t asking to stay because she was angling for a quickie.

“I would be more offended if you left,” Jack replied.

Yeah. Yeah, that would follow being the girlfriend who brought dinner and made a big gesture. Liz could see that now. She stared up at the ceiling, blowing out a long breath of frustration.

“Why do you even like me, anyway?” she asked.

“You first,” Jack replied.

“You make me so mad that sometimes I want to claw your eyes out,” Liz heard herself say. “You and your damned sexy voice that makes me crazy because you are right all the time, even though you’re practically a caveman. You keep making me think that it’s possible that I’m not just smart, and I’m not just funny, but that people like me. And that I’m pretty. And you make me so crazy that suddenly I’m inspired even when I want to bite you.”

She tilted her head, daring to look at Jack. Jack was staring at her dumbfounded, and maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned that sometimes — a lot of the time — she wanted to hurt him. Except that was part of what made Jack so good, that she could leave marks and he didn’t seem to care and Liz felt better.

“I have never heard someone say something like that to me and mean it,” he said, sounding. He sounded like he was genuinely awed.

“I said I wanted to bite you,” Liz said in a tiny voice. “I didn’t mean it in a sexy way.”

“You said that I inspire you to passion, as well as to your better angels, despite the protests of your usual rules and boundaries,” Jack said. “That _is_ the sort of thing a lover wants to hear, Elizabeth.”

Liz’s heart tried to beat slower. “Well, that’s all true,” she said. “So now it’s your turn.”

“Oh, I don’t have a prepared speech,” Jack said. “I’m simply in love with you. In the typical, heterosexist sense of the phrase, before you even ask.”

“Oh,” Liz said. “Okay.”

“You can flee screaming into the night, if you need to,” Jack said. “I’m impressed that you managed to ask to stay, let alone the prepared speech that would make Cameron Crowe weep with envy.”

Oh, she did need to. She wanted to run and apologize later, maybe with oral sex and candy. But that would just mean Liz would have to deal with this, and there was always a chance that she would have to rescue Tracy from ninja assassins, or Jenna from becoming Kevin Federline’s girlfriend, or something.

Her foot was totally twitching. But she was the grown-up, not her twitchy foot.

“No, I will stay until your conference call,” Liz said, the syllables forming very formally in her mouth. “Because I want to stay.”

“Good man,” Jack said. “Someday, you may even look back at this moment and be proud, Liz.”

Ahh, there was her urge to bite him in a non-sexy manner. “You…” she said, shaking her fingers at him. “Grr. Just. Grr, okay?”

“Love you, too,” Jack said with an insufferably smug look on his face.

All right. That did it. Now she was going to bite him.

“Lem — Eliza — Liz! That broke the skin!”

And now Liz felt entirely better. So there, twitchy foot.


End file.
